


the ghost in your machine

by corleones



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:14:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corleones/pseuds/corleones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern!AU; She is only twenty when she first meets him and he, the young wolf as the newspapers call him, is not much older.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ghost in your machine

She is only twenty when she first meets him and he,  _the young wolf_  as the newspapers call him, is not much older. She forgets where they meet exactly; it could have been anywhere. The street outside the hospital, the cafe across the road, the gallery where his favourite artist hung beside hers. She has vague recollections of being beside him in all those places but she cannot untangle them to determine which was the first.  
  
She remembers that the first time she saw him, his arm was still in the sling. That the first time she saw him without it, his elbow and wrist no longer restrained by the wide swath of rough cloth, he had kissed her and his fingers had fit into the curve of her spine.  
  
She remembers that when he bent his head to kiss her shoulder, there had been flecks of grey in hair and that she had tangled her fingers in the curls and wondered how they got there.   
  
These things she remembers. She lets go of everything else.  
  
  
-  
  
  
(People - her mother, the reporters who hound the front door, friends she hasn't spoken to in years - always want to know how it began. They want to know if he kissed her first. If she seduced him. They ask if she knew he was engaged because they already know that she did - who didn't? - and they want to know  _why_.   
  
This is why she learns to forget, because it is easier than learning to lie.)  
  
  
-  
  
  
The first few weeks with him are easy - it is only later that things grow strained between them, which is funny. But at the start of it, they are quiet around each other. He cooks her breakfast, kisses the sleep from her eyes as he wakes her up. She wears his jumpers around the apartment and stays there in the mornings, even when he is gone. She reads his books sometimes, lying across the unmade bed. It is easy; the people who speculate could never suspect how easy it was for them then.  
  
When he asks her to marry him, she knows that it will end. She knows it won't be easy, it won't be like this any more. She cannot save these moments for later, laughing in the elevator with his fingers inside her, wiping lipstick from his collar before she sends him to work. She knows what he is asking and she knows how it will change.  
  
But she puts up her chin and says yes.  
  
Later, she will think that this was always how it was meant to go.  
  
"You don't have to do this, you know."  
  
He shakes his head. "I want to. I love you and I - it would be wrong to marry someone else like this." He puts his hands on her shoulders. He says to her "I will not give you up."  
  
Jeyne puts her chin and says yes.  
  
  
-  
  
  
They call her all sorts of things in the papers now and she's never been the type to respond and if the skin around her knuckles is tight from always curling into fists and if there are lines around her mouth from frowning - well, they see that.  
  
When they call her  _Mrs. Stark_ , she flinches.   
  
They don't get that either.  
  
  
-  
  
  
When they brought his body in, she had pressed her hand to her mouth and screamed. The room was full of people. She had screamed and screamed but there had been no sound.   
  
They lay him at her feet.   
  
She smells gunpowder and blood and she screams until there is nothing left in her lungs to give.  
  
  
-  
  
  
These days, she spends most of her time looking for a house in the country. She thinks she would like an island far away. 

  
It's funny, when she was younger, she always wanted the cities, always longed for the noise and the drama and the lights and now that it is wrapped all around her, she cannot wait to leave. She has only spent two years here, in all. That is not very much for a life like hers.

Her mother asks what she wants and Jeyne shrugs her shoulders, says  _"Time."_

She dreams about a place where she can be alone. She could take her books and her records and all those clothes that still smell like the memories she has given away. 

She thinks she would rather live for a week on that island than a hundred more years in this city. 

Her husband chases at her heels like a grim reaper, like a bad omen. She puts away religion and thinks  _let him._  She has years yet, she knows. She is not the kind to follow him. She doesn't think she's ever seen the sense in love like that.

 

-

 

Here are the last things she remembers though no one ever asks about those - 

She remembers that she had asked to go with him, that she had stood up on her tip toes as he dressed and kissed the side of his face, the stubble along his jaw, his earlobe. Her hands had been on his shoulders. She had asked to go with him because she missed him, because he had not been around that week because she gone to sleep and woken up in an empty bed for four nights and she missed him. When he moved to kiss her goodbye at the door, she had turned her face away. His breath smelled how coffee. She had thought about how long it had been since she had held his head in her lap and counted the grey hairs in his mane. Most of the time, they talked across dinner tables in those days, hardly ever alone. 

They had been married six months then but no one ever asks questions about this.

 

-

 

She doesn't feel guilty. No one asks her if she does, but they are all thinking it and won't say but no - no, she doesn't.

History has a way of laying itself out. For all his pride and his luck, Robb was never a good politician. He rose and burned like a prince.

Things like that never last.

 

-

 

  
Of course, there are questions Jeyne never asked either. She wore his wedding ring, she slept in his bed. She prepared to give him sons. She sat at his table and smiled when he asked her to. She let them take pictures of the two of them on their honeymoon, with his hand holding her wrist.

She never twisted the ring around her finger, never asked "why did you marry me."

Of course, he loves her, she knows that but she is not a child any more. She knows that love alone wouldn't have been enough, knows that she was never a choice but in some ways, always an escape route. Knows he wanted her as much as he wanted to prove himself and it was damn convenient that the two, at that time, seemed to intersect. Robb Stark, his own man. Robb Stark who was not his father.

She never wears the ring on her finger, after he's gone. It sits on a gold chain in the middle of her chest.

 

-

 

There were people she could have loved if it hadn't been for him, people she could have made lives with. There were so many ways it could have gone but it didn't, it went like this. She met Robb. She loved and married him and for a short time, they made a life together and then it was taken from them.

She paints her lips, powders her cheeks and puts her chin up, again and again.

Remember:  _she said yes._  



End file.
